Quinn - application developer

Quinn spends very little to no time researching OpenStack. Quinn does not care how the cloud instances used were installed, as long as they work exactly as expected and the needed APIs do not change unexpectedly. Quinn does not control what tool is used to install and maintain the cloud instances. However, Quinn determines the requirements for those cloud instances. Any changes made to the APIs greatly impact Quinn’s work.

Cloud applications are defined as:

  • Applications built using OpenStack SDKs or APIs

  • Applications deployed on top of OpenStack using Application Catalog service, Orchestration service, or any 3rd-party deployment or management tools

  • PaaS and container solutions running on top of OpenStack

The cloud instances Quinn consumes can use various OpenStack projects. Quinn does not know the project names and goals, and has never been to an OpenStack Summit.

Quinn wishes to deploy applications to the cloud without issues and to receive warnings about any issues with the applications before tickets start coming. Whenever an issue arises during deployment or testing, Quinn is grateful for clear uncomplicated notices. Such notices allow Quinn to resolve the issues before customers become frustrated. Quinn values a consistent API that makes Quinn’s development future-proof and backwards-compatible.

Key tasks

Quinn performs the following tasks frequently:

  • Development: Develops cloud-based applications with various requirements.

  • Management: Controls and changes all aspects of compute instances and file storage.

  • Testing: Tests developed applications before deploying them. Performs the tests in one or multiple cloud instances.

  • Deployment: Deploys applications to one or multiple cloud instances.

Your development

Quinn’s main concern are the APIs available. Quinn will not interact directly with OpenStack, save in rare cases or within small organizations. Therefore, changes to the GUI and CLI are not relevant to Quinn. On the other hand, even the tiniest changes in APIs have a high impact on Quinn’s application development.

Quinn assumes that the cloud has the resources the applications need. If the cloud does not have the resources, Quinn expects the cloud to let inform what resources are missing in such a way, that Quinn can ask a Cloud or Domain operator to add those resources. Quinn will not add the resources. Therefore, ensure that notifications are clear and do not require any advanced knowledge of OpenStack to identify the issues.

The organizational models

The tasks that the persona performs within a certain organizational model are important for the usability of your OpenStack development. Within a small organization, such as Rifkom or Nikishi University, Quinn might be required to assume some roles and responsibilities of a Domain Operator or a Cloud Operator. Within a larger organization, like CNBB Securities, Quinn will likely not work alone on an application. Multiple application developers would need to access a single cloud to develop, test, and deploy the same application, making user control a requirement for the cloud. See The model companies for more information on how Quinn fits into different user ecosystems.